■ McClellan, Scott, 2008. What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. New York: Public Affairs. xiv + 341pp. ISBN 9781586485566
| Published date | 01 July 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00223433090460040810 |
| Date | 01 July 2009 |
| Author | David Isenberg |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
BOOK NOTES 603
This is an ethnographic account of the warscape
of Mozambique, based on the author’s long-term
fieldwork experiences in Machaze District and
the provincial capital of Chimoio, and among
Machazian migrants in Zimbabwe and South
Africa. Wartime mobility is a key topic of this
book, as it questions the concept of ‘displace-
ment’. The author argues that wartime social
existence should be investigated within a much
broader framework than that of ‘coping with
violence’. The ‘anthropological gaze’ in the study
of war should be refocused from violence to the
social condition in war, and the ‘struggle for the
social imagination’, discarding simplistic cat-
egories of ‘refugee’, ‘victim’ and ‘combatant’ or
‘perpetrator’. This allows us to catch glimpses of
people struggling with life projects in complex
and changing social conditions and to make sense
of the subjective, socially constructed and cultur-
ally framed meanings of diverse violent practices.
More importantly, we should not take for granted
that the social condition of war is primarily about
violence (or its presence or absence). As the book
illustrates, it is as much about social transforma-
tion, new dilemmas and opportunities, struggles
over legitimacy and power, and the negotiation
of life strategies. In providing a detailed analysis
of the ‘micro-politics’ of wartime social processes
in Mozambique, this book also represents a new
approach to the anthropology of war, which
should be of interest to anyone working on vio-
lent conflict, displacement and migration.
Åshild Kolås
McClellan, Scott, 2008. What Happened:
Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s
Culture of Deception. New York: Public Affairs.
xiv + 341pp. ISBN 9781586485566.
The Bush administration will provide work for
historians for decades. As they grapple with the
disconnect between the administration’s rhetoric
when it first took office and its subsequent activi-
ties, they will of necessity refer to the memoirs
by former administration officials. One of the
more recent is that by former White House Press
Secretary Scott McClellan. McClellan was and, at
least in his own mind, remains loyal to George
Bush. But his book details how the pursuit of the
‘permanent campaign’ – which can be defined as
a ‘nonstop process seeking to manipulate sources
of public approval to engage in the act of gov-
erning itself ’ – ultimately helped to derail the
former CIA detainees and, for the same reason,
pressured another country’s court not to release
information about US torture of a prisoner.
David Isenberg
Laitin, David D., 2007. Nations, States, and
Violence. Oxford & New York: Oxford University
Press. xv + 162 pp. ISBN 9780199228232.
As a major contributor to the academic study of
ethnic conflict and cooperation, David Laitin is
well positioned to produce this synthesizing work
on national and ethnic violence. Starting out by
discussing the four routes to ethnic violence –
irredentism (when states seek to redeem territo-
ries populated by fellow nationals), secessionism
(when national minorities seek self-determinism
for a territory within a state), sons-of-the-soil
movements (indigenous reactions to the migration
of the majority population into their historical
homelands, resulting in demographic takeover),
and pogroms and communal warfare (quasi-
organized militias attacking civilians or militias
from another ethnic group) – Laitin goes on to
show that ethnic violence is actually surprisingly
rare. While ethnic heterogeneity abounds, ethnic
violence does not, and weak and unresponsive
states are primarily to blame for civil wars today.
A major discussion in the study of nationalism
has been over whether modern national identities
have ancient cultural roots, or if they are rather
constructed and imagined communities. Draw-
ing on the latter perspective, Laitin sees national
identities as emerging from a process in which
individuals coordinate cultural traits. While iden-
tities are not in reality a ‘daily plebiscite’, as meta-
phorically argued by Ernest Renan, they are far
from being static categories that inhibit cultural
mobility. Finally, Laitin discusses the challenge of
creating social solidarity in multi-ethnic societies
and the managing of multi-ethnic states. The book
provides a rich set of empirical detail and illustra-
tion and is written in accessible, non- technical
language. It is an exemplary introduction to the
topic of ethnic conflict and cooperation which is
also well suited for undergraduate classes and a
broader non-academic audience.
Henrik Urdal
Lubkemann, Stephen C., 2008. Culture in
Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition
in War. Chicago, IL & London: University of
Chicago Press. 401 pp. ISBN 9780226496412.
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